1. Technical Field
This document relates to methods and materials involved in treating cancer. For example, this document relates to methods and materials involved in using particles (e.g., gold nanoparticles) containing a KTLLPTPYC amino acid sequence (SEQ ID NO:1) or a KTLLPTPYCC amino acid sequence (SEQ ID NO:2) to treat cancer (e.g., pancreatic cancer).
2. Background Information
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the deadliest human cancers with a five-year survival rate of 8% only. It is estimated to have 53,670 new cases and cause 43,090 deaths in 2017 in the United States, and the numbers have been steadily increasing over the years. The high mortality rate of PDAC patients is mainly attributed to an aggressive malignant phenotype, wide-spread metastasis and late-stage diagnosis. Current frontline treatments for PDAC such as FOLFIRINOX (a combination of leucovorin, 5-fluorouracil, irinotecan, and oxaliplatin) or Gemcitabine (Gem) with Abraxane provide modest survival benefits only (Goldstein et al., J. Natl. Cancer Inst., 107 (2015); and Papadatos-Pastos et al., Expert Rev. Anticancer Ther., 14:1115 (2014)). Moreover, a majority of these drugs are not tumor-selective, which ultimately results in systemic toxicity. Development of receptor-targeted nano drug delivery systems with the ability to specifically bind to receptors that are overexpressed in malignant cells is emerging as an attractive therapeutic alternative (Yu et al., Mol. Membr. Biol., 27:286 (2010)). Among them, gold nanoparticles (GNPs) have attracted interest due to their ease of synthesis, chemical stability, excellent biocompatibility, and unique optical properties (Sykes et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 113:E1142 (2016); and Zhang, Cell Biochem. Biophys., 72:771 (2015)).